More than 100 people took part in a candlelight vigil for Kevin VIctor in Hyattsville on Dec. 10, 2011. The former Northwestern High School football player was gunned down Friday night. (Hamil Harris/THE WASHINGTON POST)

A 21-year-old man who had been a high school football player was found fatally shot late Friday in the Brentwood area of Prince George’s County.

Police said Kevin Victor, a Brentwood resident, was found about 10:30 p.m. in the 4600 block of 37th Street.

Police gave no information about a suspect or motive in the shooting, but a woman who said she helped raise Victor said she understood that he had been killed during an attempt to rob him.

The woman, Deidre Douglas, called the death a tragedy and “so unnecessary.”

She said Victor and friends had left the Brentwood Recreation Center when they were confronted by two would-be robbers. “Kevin kind of hesitated,” she said she had learned. “And the next thing you know there was a gunshot.”

After hearing a shot in the darkness, Victor’s friends ran, she said. But when they realized that he was not with them, they returned to find him lying unconscious.

“He touched lives,” Bryan Pierre, head football coach at Northwestern High School, said Saturday night in an interview. Victor had graduated from Northwestern, where he had played running back and linebacker. “He was always helping out,” the coach said.

Douglas said that Victor had worked at a store at Prince George’s Plaza and was helping out with younger siblings. “He had never been in any trouble,” Douglas said. “He was very well liked. . . . He was loved by everybody.”

Hamil Harris is currently a multi-platform reporter on the Local Desk of The Washington Post.

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